Spoiler Alert: This game starts at the end and goes backward from there

Hayden Dingman |
Oct. 20, 2014

Dante had it wrong. (Be warned: I'm about to spoil an 800-year-old piece of literature.) In The Divine Comedy Dante tells us there are seven circles of hell, increasing in severity of punishment as you delve deeper. Clearly he missed the special eighth circle of hell for people who spoil stories in any medium, be it books, film, television, or video games.

The art style is also a bit of a turn-off. It has a sort-of roughness to it that smacks of low-budget gaming regardless of whether it was done on purpose. There's a crudeness — almost a GameMaker-esque quality — to it that I would expect from a free web game.

Spoiler Alert does have options for speedrunning and user content, which I expect might extend the lifespan of the game for certain people. However, I don't think it's enough to salvage the short length or turn this into a must-buy, despite the strength of the core concept.

Bottom line

I had brief moments where I enjoyed Spoiler Alert, but there's not enough of it and what is there isn't polished enough to really merit playing. It's a highly creative concept but, ultimately, a gimmick that doesn't quite work as a game.